Why does simsays.co.uk redirect to penrodshero.com with a 302

According to a number of sources simsays.co.uk was the current leader in the WiX SEO Hero Contest (discounting the ineligible listings).

With this in mind some of the questions are;

1. Why is simsays.co.uk redirecting to penrodshero.com?

2. Why is simsays.co.uk redirecting to penrodshero.com with a 302 redirect?

3. Is the simsays.co.uk to penrodshero.com redirect a malicious redirect?

4. Is the simsays.co.uk to penrodshero.com redirect a manipulative redirect?

5. Is the simsays.co.uk to penrodshero.com redirect against the Google guidelines?

Let Penrod answer these questions for you

1. Why is simsays.co.uk redirecting to penrodshero.com? – As we discussed on Day 1 of the WiX SEO Hero Contest, we have no idea which version of Google the SEO Hero Moderator will use when judging the competition and more importantly, where will he be searching from when judging the competition.

Now, as you can see if using both versions of the SEO Hero Country search tools on our SEO Hero homepage, the results vary considerable depending not only on which version of Google is used, but also on where the searcher is searching from.

Narrow it down even further by using our search tool to search for a SEO Hero in a different country and you will see the results are even more varied.

A perfect example of this is here UK SEO Hero where after clicking to find a SEO Hero in United Kingdom simsays.co.uk is in the top position.

With the importance of location becoming obvious we decided the best way of overcoming this problem would be to set International Targeting to Unlisted in Google Search Console, which as any .co.uk owner knows is not possible on localized TLD’s

Hence the move from simsays.co.uk to penrodshero.com

2. Why is simsays.co.uk redirecting to penrodshero.com with a 302 redirect? – We (TJ and Penrod) know we have no chance of winning the WiX SEO Hero Contest and intend to use simsays.co.uk well after the competition has finished, as it is only a temporary redirect we have used the 302

3. Is the simsays.co.uk to penrodshero.com redirect a malicious redirect? – This is partially answered in the answer to question 1, no it is not a malicious redirect and is not part of any grey hat trickery.

4. Is the simsays.co.uk to penrodshero.com redirect a manipulative redirect? – Again this is partially answered in the answer to question 1, in our opinion it is not a manipulative redirect, the only reason we are doing it is because Google do not have an International Targeting setting for .co.uk domains.

We could ask Google why not?
What happens when an established website on a country specific TLD wants to target an International Market – Do they have to scrap their domain and go neutral?

5. Is the simsays.co.uk to penrodshero.com redirect against the Google guidelines? – As we always stress, rules are rules – guidelines are guidelines.

Unfortunately as we said in our post on Day 6 How will the SEO Hero Contest be Judged? and in a full article here How will the Wix SEO Hero Contest be Judged? the section where it says, “The WIX SEO Hero Contest website must be created, maintained and promoted in compliance with the Google Guidelines for SEO” makes the contest almost impossible to get a true result, as it is completely open to how the moderator interprets the Google guidelines.

You and I may say the simsays.co.uk to penrodshero.com redirect is not against the Google guidelines, but if the moderator says it is, then both entries could be banned 🙁

Update to add:

You may have noticed that simsays.co.uk no longer has a 302 redirect to penrodshero.com

Rather than redirecting the whole site I decided to just redirect the initial posts and pages instead.